Representation of different cultures through dialogic interaction in broadcast news
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Mass media is the most influential tool in shaping our understanding of the world. It has the power to construct images of events, people, social realities, to problematize, trivialize or normalize various issues and thus instil certain ideas into its audiences. Broadcast TV news constructs the image of the world and its inhabitants through the selection of newsworthy events and their subsequent presentation using various discourse strategies together with the interplay of the verbal, visual, audio and other modes. The nature of the reports is, to a considerable extent, dialogic and gives room to various voices. Most often these speak as representatives of elite or, on the contrary, “ordinary people” groups and offer the audiences the chance to identify with them, oppose them, learn from them etc. However, TV news report not only on domestic events and present not only domestic voices. They also construct images of other nations, cultures and their members and this construction is the more powerful as the audiences typically do not come into contact with them on a daily basis outside of the mediated context. The inclusion of voices representing other than the local cultures, the discourse and visual strategies used for framing their words and the overall selection of topics they are invited to speak on also shape the image the audiences get. The present study thus aims to find out how TV news broadcasts construct the image of other cultures and what this image predominantly is through analysing interviews and their fragments with representatives of other than the local culture. The analysed material comes from Czech prime- time public-service news broadcasts as well as British ones, collected over the period of one month, to see whether some tendencies can be ascribed to specific cultural environments or company policies, or whether they are rather applicable transnationally. |
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